PRONI search room offers access to GRONI records

From the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni), major news about an enhancement that will further enhance the centre as Ireland's premier research resource:

Births/Deaths and Marriage Search service @ PRONI

PRONI has partnered with the General Register Office of Northern Ireland (GRONI) to bring a birth/death and marriage certificate search service to PRONI’s Public Search Room. It is now possible to search GRONI’s full database from 1845 right up to present day and should prove a valuable resource for those researching their family history.

*Please note that this is a payable search service in which customers will be required to register with GRONI. In addition PRONI only offers a search service of the database. Copies of Birth/Death and Marriage Certificates must be requested direct from GRONI.

For further information on Births, Deaths and Marriages Certificates, visit the GRONI website.

COMMENT: This announcement effectively does two things - it allows for a more centralised GRONI access point in Belfast, considering that the main facility is due to move out of the town centre shortly - and it effectively consolidates PRONI's search room into a full family history hub, much in the way the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh acts.

PRONI now offers access to parish material, civil BMD records and archive material for Northern Ireland, all on one floor in the same building. Note that whilst some of the historic civil records can be accessed via the GENI site at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk/ and the new online offering from the southern government at www.irishgenealogy.ie, the access offered by GRONI itself in Belfast does not follow the same online closure periods of births over 100 years old, marriages over 75 years old, and deaths over 50 - which means that records (almost) up to the present day can be consulted. And that is important in particular from 1922 onwards, where GRONI is the sole national body holding such records for the north.

Another major development in Belfast!

Chris

For details on my genealogy guide books, including A Beginner's Guide to British and Irish Genealogy, A Decade of Irish Centenaries: Researching Ireland 1912-1923, Discover Scottish Church Records (2nd edition), Discover Irish Land Records and Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Crisis, please visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html.